


The Color of a Queen, is this

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Female Friendship, Romance, argument, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 11:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9895034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "Is that what I am to you?"





	

She’d been given Nurse Mary’s former room and that at least was a consolation; it did not feel like one of the impersonal rooms at the hotel anymore and she retained a sense of the thoughtful friend who had inhabited the space for several months, softening the injury of her abrupt departure from the home that no longer held any welcome or acceptance for the woman she was becoming. Nurse Mary would have smiled compassionately if Emma could have told her, winding bandages together in the evening, and Emma thought she would not have been lectured or directed to her Bible for succor, but cossetted a little as Nurse Mary saw fit and praised for discovering and following her conscience. She might have told her friend about the other blow, the estrangement from the chaplain, and received not a smile but a steady gaze and a patient silence that would allow Emma to find the words to explain herself. She supposed Nurse Mary might have been a similar help to Henry, familiar with his ideals and his Yankee sensibilities, but they must all do without. Dr. Foster had the look of a lost soul when he was not engrossed in a boy’s medical care and even Nurse Hastings seemed peculiarly bereft without her preferred sparring partner.

Emma wished for some of her friend’s wisdom when she was confronted by Henry Hopkins, days after their last, terrible conversation, but found she was sadly lacking. She was only glad that she had finished sorting the glass vials of medicines and tonics, so there was no risk to their meager supply that she might shatter them all with her impetuous response. She might have expected him to begin haltingly, searching for the correct word that conveyed apology and truth, but he took a different tack, direct and fluent, with only the faintest sense that he had rehearsed what he said.

“Miss Green, I must speak to you. I must apologize to you, for the way I expressed myself during our previous conversation, when I referred to my weakness for you. When I suggested that you were a weakness—when you are not. You are a psalm I do not understand, a vision I cannot explain, a challenge--”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! I’m none of that. That foolishness. I’m just Emma Green and I haven’t time to waste on a pedestal or in a reverie. I have work to do—and so do you,” she exclaimed as she never would have imagined, without anything ladylike about her words, her tone, anathema to the girl she had been. She wasn’t that girl, any girl, any longer and she couldn’t say she liked it, just that it was the truth.

Henry was taken aback, she could tell, but she hadn’t the least impulse to apologize or soothe him. She’d seen his face when he was sorrowing, grieving and angry, when he was relieved and pleased and once, when he was ardent and tender; she did not recognize what she saw now.

“Just so, Emma. I shan’t keep you,” he said quietly and stepped back to let her pass. She felt the warm strength of him beside her for a moment as she walked, heard the breath he took, and recalled herself to her duty and how it sustained her more than any dream, any wish for his serious dark eyes, his gentle hands, his virtue and his flaws. She had loved a bad man and a good one and now she must do more than love.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm sure the show will do its thing about *that* conversation, but I am getting the jump on them with my take. Here Emma and Henry are at little bit at cross purposes but in a way I think would allow them to move forward.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
